


Gravity

by Cirkne



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, mentions of canon drug abuse, mentions of canon sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 19:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5678479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/pseuds/Cirkne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something pulls him towards Derek</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> If it was up to me character study fics would be all I wrote

Spencer knows, the same way he knows that the longest cells in the human body are the motor neurons, that his mind will never leave him alone. There is no quiet in his life, no calm. He is, for the most part, fine with that. Still, there is a part of him that wonders, sometimes, late at night when he can’t fall asleep. He wonders how his life would be if he was ordinary.

Spencer doesn’t know how not to think, no one has ever made his mind blank but then there is Derek, leaning into his space and everything stills, slows. This is probably what being normal feels like.

It takes him a bit to realize it. He is getting used to being touched and hugged and cared for without it being temporary, and for a while there is no time to realize it. Derek is just there like it’s second nature, like all of it, whatever it is, was always meant to be. Spencer doesn’t believe in fate but he’s looking at Derek on the jet home and there’s something about their friendship he can’t place, something he can’t explain. It is a scary thought.

JJ is the only person in the world to call him Spence and he thinks he likes that. She kisses his cheek the night after the game and tells him he’s welcome to ask her out again. He thanks Gideon for the tickets once more. Getting over whatever feelings he may have felt towards JJ is easy.

Lila kisses him in the pool. A week later he has forgotten how her lips felt because he was thinking of so many other things then. Kissing - feelings, it is not something to read, not a list of things to remember. He figures it’s not for him, never was, never will be.

Derek brings him a stack of books because he was going to get rid of them and he figured Spencer might enjoy them. He’s read three of the four but he doesn’t tell Derek that; just says thank you.

He knows it is not his pain to have but he lays awake in the middle of the night and thinks of a twelve-year-old boy being used by cruel hands. It is unbelievably selfish to cry but he does. He rests his hand on Derek’s shoulder while he’s waiting for Derek to move from the coffee machine. Once again, Spencer’s glad he has never looked threatening in his life.

Spencer dies right next to a cemetery and is revived in the same place. Weeks later he will try to find irony in that but his mind will be too exhausted to find irony in anything.

You can’t fix broken glass with duct tape, cravings can last up to a life time, the curtains in his apartment are dark enough to not let any light in.

He starts learning Russian seven months after he meets Emily. She laughs at his accent the first time he says something in it and brings him a book the next day. He knows it will not help him pronounce things but he stuffs it in his bag and thanks her.

Derek calls him pretty thing late one evening when they’re waiting for the elevator and it’s not any different from the usual nicknames but when Spencer lifts his head to look at him there’s something about the air around them he can’t place. Then, the elevator door is opening. A lot later Spencer will realize that was the only time Derek called him that but it will be too late to have any significance anymore.

Gideon’s note says he knew Spencer would be the one to come check on him. Spencer considers staying there and then considers trying to find Gideon, joining him in whatever he is doing. He calls Derek before he calls Hotchner because Derek will know what to say to him. Spencer doesn’t know if he can stand on his own, with no one there to guide him. He doesn’t know but he is willing to find out.

It makes sense that he wants control. It makes sense that there are things you do to ruin yourself and there are things you let people do to ruin you. It makes sense to want to stay alive. Makes sense nothing is decided, nothing is final. At any moment Spencer could make the decision to kill someone. At any moment Spencer could get up and leave, he could break everything he has as if his life was a game and he was knocking the tower over. What doesn’t make sense, what shouldn’t make sense is that he finds comfort in it.

Penelope lays in a hospital bed and smiles. Spencer folds his hands and tries not to think about statistics, about the fact that she could have died. He watches Derek hold her hand and feels like he is intruding. Like he has always been intruding. They have something between them, something he doesn’t understand and as he leaves the room his heart stings. It’s worry, he tells himself and for awhile, he believes it.

Spencer watches a teenager get shot because he failed to talk someone down and wonders if he should be out in the field at all. If maybe it would be better if he sat behind a desk and talked to the team over the phone, if he never left the comfort of maps and files. Penelope says she doesn’t know how he does it. Spencer doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t either.

Sometimes when Spencer forgets his surroundings and zones out, Derek touches his shoulder or his back, smiles at him and walks away. He thinks about those moments when his cravings get worse. About how Derek can always pull him out of it and how he could probably pull him out of this too. Without saying a word.

After five years of sobriety, the chance of relapse is less than fifteen percent. Spencer saves Owen and hopes it can get him through the last two months of his first year.

His father is not a killer but Spencer would have probably taken more comfort in that than what he is given now. His father doesn’t seem like a bad person at all and that stings more than anything else about him could.

Spencer’s a godfather and it makes him feel more important than the cases they’ve solved. It makes him yearn, hope for one day being a father but then he is pushing the idea away, pretending he doesn’t want it. He can’t put a child through what his mother put him through.

When he thinks Emily’s dead, he rereads the book she gave him over and over even though he doesn’t need to. As if there’s something he might have missed, as if he could ever miss something. The reason scar tissue looks different than other skin tissue is because of the overgrowth of collagen during the healing process. He waits for scars to show up all over his body but they never do.

Derek makes him coffee one morning and says he hopes he put enough sugar in it. He hasn’t. Emily comes back eight days later.

Instead of keeping a picture of Maeve, he keeps the book. He only had a few minutes of her appearance and ten months of her words and thoughts. He cherishes that more than he does anything else. His mother is the only one not to ask if he’s ok. She knows, Spencer tells himself, she does.

One in twenty boys is a victim of child sexual abuse. Carl Buford dies. That day there is more traffic than usual and Spencer does his best to avoid it as he’s driving Derek home.

You’d think that with years of it being hidden, it would come to him with a crash. Instead, it comes like a wave, he can almost see it from the shore, he is expecting it. Derek leans his head against Spencer’s shoulder on the jet and the water hits his legs. As the wave’s pulling back, the sand under his feet goes with it. He is in love with Derek Morgan.

***

Penelope, as she has stated many times before, is not a profiler. Spencer thinks that is exactly why she asks instead of just observing and that is exactly why he tells her instead of anyone else. She sits him down on a chair in her office and pats his shoulder, offers him a cookie.

“Lover boy,” she calls him as he leaves her office and it comes out sad. Spencer understands.

***

JJ leans against his desk one morning and turns to face the door. They watch Derek get in without saying a word and then she turns to him, gives him a sad smile and pushes herself off of the desk.

“He doesn’t like the Redskins,” she says after a moment. “You’ll have to think of another wooing tactic.”

Spencer snorts and smiles up at her. He mouths ‘thanks’ and wonders if he will be angry at Penelope for telling later, after it’s not just relief he feels. He figures he won’t.

***

It’s the beginning of spring. Derek is laying in yet another hospital bed, in yet another city, during yet another case.

“You know,” he starts. “When she stabbed me I remember thinking that your worried face would be the last thing I see, and I was fine with that.”

Spencer shuffles where he’s sitting on a chair next to the bed, runs a hand through his hair. He doesn’t know what to say so he waits for Derek to say something again.

“Does that not bother you?” Derek asks and there’s something Spencer can’t place in his eyes.

“… I’ve gotten used to the idea of one of you being the last thing I see,” Spencer answers, shuffles in his chair again and looks down at his hands on his lap. “It’s better than it being Tobias,” he mutters, really quietly now.

When he looks up again there’s something sad in Derek’s eyes and he does this - he always has - he worries about others before he worries about himself.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Derek says, and reaches for Spencer’s hand. Spencer lets him take it but frowns at Derek’s fingers.

“You were stabbed,” he says. “You should worry about yourself.”

“But I always worry about you, pretty boy,” Derek tells him and they stay holding hands until Hotch is there to remind them they are Doctor Reid and Supervisory Special Agent Morgan. For a moment, Spencer had allowed himself to forget that.

***

He understands why his knowledge is often rejected, understands why he has to use simpler terms, why he should be patient with others. Still, he is often not the bigger person. He makes them ask, takes pride in the fact he knows when they do not, answers questions that no one is expecting the answer to.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Derek says on their jet home when he is half asleep in his seat and when Spencer starts to, he doesn’t stop him to say he was kidding. Spencer talks until Derek’s shoulders fall, until his whole body relaxes, until Derek is asleep. Spencer stays awake coming up with other things he could tell him.

***

He hates the term ‘clean’ that goes hand in hand with 'sober’. If a stain stays long enough, you can see it years after it has faded in the wash just because you know. If you look at scars long enough, you will find them years after they have healed because in your mind they’re supposed to be there. Spencer sees traces of addiction everywhere he goes.

If body and spirit are separate, cravings and need is the thing that unites them. Loving Derek comes as easy as breathing. Needing him is not being able to fall asleep when your body aches with exhaustion.

“I can drive you home,” Derek offers in the dark of a parking lot. Spencer looks at him and thinks about how it hasn’t rained in three weeks, and tells him no.

***

Savannah - from the English word for the large grassy plain, ultimately deriving from the Taino word zabana.

You cannot lose something that never belonged to you. You cannot lose something if you know exactly where it is. Spencer knows this and yet it feels like he has lost Derek.

***

The bullied become the bullies, the abused become the abusers. It comes from wanting to take the power and control that was taken away from you back. He wonders what the people that start the chain want. Wonders why the ones that dealt with the worst end up being the ones that want to protect instead of hurt.

He looks at Derek, strong and confident and soft and kind. Funny and attractive and brave and smart. Derek was taken apart and then he put himself together. You almost cannot tell the difference.

He looks at himself, insecure and anxious but kind. Not funny, not attractive but smart. He was broken into pieces and then he hurried to glue himself together. Spencer was a six-year-old that did not know how to fix things right.

***

After Maeve died Derek had helped Spencer clean out his apartment. After Savannah leaves, Spencer helps Derek break down the home he was building for them so that he can rebuild it once again.

***

They are driving back from the supermarket with containers of microwave food in a bag by Spencer’s feet. The radio station cuts off the end of the song for a weather prognosis. Derek doesn’t change the station. Spencer lets the hosts’ voices fill the car. He is thinking of hurricane statistics and snowstorms and tidal waves and volcano eruptions. He is thinking of the average number of sunny days in Washington and the average number of rainy days in Las Vegas.

“I’m in love with you,” Derek says over the radio. The headlights illuminate the road, Spencer looks ahead. A car drives in the opposite direction of them. Spencer wonders how many people in the world confessed at the same time as Derek and what reactions they were met by.

Spencer has never been speechless. He turns to look at Derek and nods because there is nothing he can say. Derek doesn’t tense, doesn’t shut off, doesn’t stop the car. Nothing changes. A song starts playing on the radio. Spencer turns back to look ahead.

***

“I’m going to kiss you,” Derek says when they are back in the kitchen of his newly rebuilt home and there’s a counter between them. Spencer leans into it like it’s easy, simple, like they’ve done this before. It’s chaste, quick and warm.

Spencer hadn’t imagined it like this. In his mind it was always quick paced and rough, intense and filled with need. He hadn’t thought it would fall into place by its own, like it had been happening years before either of them knew it.

Derek smiles at him, takes his hand. Spencer lets him and as he’s looking at their hands, he thinks of how Derek is the only person he leans into, the only person he reaches for. Derek is rubbing his thumb on Spencer’s palm, letting him think without interrupting and suddenly Spencer knows. Has always known.

Any two bodies in the Universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Derek is right here and that’s how it’s supposed to be.


End file.
